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Sunday, June 5, 2011

On paper

I meet my father at the 11th Street Cafe in the West Village, half a block from the Sufi House were he volunteers when he's working in Jersey. He balks and grunts a bit when I try to hug him, always unfamiliar with how people are supposed to act, horribly uncomfortable. He has never been able to show physical or emotional affection. Now that I know about his mother, I am able to forgive him or at least understand why he is this way a little better.

He's come straight from the Port Authority bus station. We sit at a table and he unzips his backpack and procures the documents, puts them on the table then crosses his arms and looks the other way, frowning, refusing to make eye-contact.



He's found it--my Iranian identity papers, the document I need to get new identity papers to renew my Iranian passport. The pale green booklet is water-stained and dog-eared, delicately falling apart. It is embossed with the Shah's symbol of the lion and the sun. I was born in 1979, the day Khomeini landed in Iran and the revolution began, so I was one of the last babies to receive the pre-revolution Iranian identity booklets, the ones with the pre-Revolution emblem. The Islamic Republic has a different emblem, a kind of globe. I can't believe I haven't had to renew it yet. I'd be arrested if I ever tried to use this today.


My identity papers are even stamped by the American Embassy of Iran, back when there still used to be an Iranian Embassy in the U.S. Now extinct, these papers are an artifact. I am sad I will have to mail this along with the required paperwork to get new, modern identity papers. The paperwork is all in Farsi; my mom has filled everything out for me--the illiterate--in blue ink. My father has brought photo-copies of his Iranian passport and my mother's passport, all the records that they are my blood-line, that I have a right to be an Iranian, even if I was born in the U.S. The Iranian government will take this booklet away and destroy it, perhaps upset it has existed so long without their notice. 

"They'll send your new papers in a few months," he says, still not looking at me. "You have to send your American passport along with this also."

I ask him if that is safe, if they will give it back. 

"They say you have to, so there's no choice, I guess," he says. "Unless you don't want to go?"

We've waited this long to turn in the paperwork because I need my American passport to go to Toronto for a business trip at the end of this month. Once I send my U.S. passport along with this other stuff, I will be forced to wait, identity-less for vulnerable months, nobody on paper, in the limbo I always belonged.

We finish our coffee. I walk with him half a block East, past the Spotted Pig. Ahead, we see the Sufis gathering outside the house, welcoming the volunteers. "I don't want to say hello to them," I say.

"Okay," he says. "Then cross the street before they see you."

I try to hug him goodbye, but he has already turned to go the other direction. I cross the street and walk quickly. From a distance, I turn around to see him meet the group. They are greeting him in Farsi, the men patting him on the back. He is smiling, laughing, happy. He belongs.

3 comments:

  1. Sending your American passport in is sort of a microcosm of your cultural identity. You surrender one side to be in the other. It's a duality that must be hard to articulate, despite how amazing you are with words. That right there gave me a sense of what you must feel at times.

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  2. Did you at least make some color copies at a Kinko's before turning them in? I'd be fascinated to see hi-res scans of those documents. I love that kinda stuff, a total geek for it.

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  3. @hook-and-eyelet: I'm sure my experience is the same as everyone's, except mine is somehow more literal. We all occupy so many different world's and try to figure out who we are in the margins.

    @Bryan: I totally made color PDF scans--I'll email them to you as long as you promise you're not a spy.

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